Some manufacturers provide electronic devices that use off-the-shelf third-party vendor components. Some electronic device manufacturers further offer to qualify such vendor components (e.g., test the vendor components under strict conditions) and, if the vendor components qualify, certify that the vendor components are from an “approved” vendor. An end customer who purchases an electronic device from an electronic device manufacturer and a component from an approved vendor typically receives an extra assurance from the electronic device manufacturer that the electronic device and the component will work normally when the component is properly installed and configured within the electronic device. On the other hand, an end customer who purchases an off the shelf component which is not from an approved vendor may receive no assurance from the electronic device manufacturer that the component will work properly within the device.
An example of a conventional electronic device, which is capable of using off the-shelf components from an approved vendor, is a data communications device that handles network traffic. Such a device can use off-the-shelf optical transceivers called Gigabit Interface Converters (GBICs) which are available from a variety of component vendors. Both off-the-shelf components from approved vendors as well as off-the-shelf components from non-approved vendors are available for this conventional electronic device. Other examples of such off-the-shelf components include Small Form Pluggable modules (SFPs and XFPs), modular optics packages known as XENPAKs, etc.
When an electronic device using components from a non-approved vendor fails, it can be difficult and expensive for the electronic device manufacturer to determine whether the failure is a result of a problem in the device itself or the components from the non-approved vendor. Accordingly, electronic device manufacturers often only agree to support device configurations which exclusively use components from an approved vendor. For device configurations that do not exclusively use components from an approved vendor, the electronic device manufacturer may not make any guarantees or may not provide any warrantees.